Creative Color Challenge – testing things out!

This month Louise turned the challenge up a notch, and gave us four colors to work with AND we had to work in letters (in any sense of that word we desired). The colors to be used are blue, orange, reddish brown, and lavender.

I had an idea fairly quickly, which I have to say was a little surprising because normally lettering or using words in my work doesn’t lead me down an inspiring path. However, this time the challenge fell in with an idea I’ve had rolling around in my head.

I want to make some animal themed jewellery (not for animals, for their people!). Some would be one of a kind, some would be more affordable “everyday” wear. I thought this would be a good opportunity to do some prototyping of everyday enamel pendants in a shape! Plus, I could use some techniques I learned in our enameling class that I haven’t revisited in a while.

Then, since I was turning the kiln on anyway – I decided to test a color mix that my friend and colleague, Bonnie, suggested my give Robin’s egg blue (on the facebook page).

Here are the results of the testing:

The 6 pieces all together. I tried two cat shapes with graphite, and the star is the color test. You can see some worked better than others.

Now, a little closer look at the individual pieces:

Mr. Tabby - this was the closest to the reddish brown I had in enamels. It is obviously too dark for the graphite to show well, but I think it is worth trying a lighter brown (which I'm going to order!)."Curious" - the blue cat! This actually shows up better in this photo than in "real life". This blue is too dark, and even though British Shorthair's are considered blue this is not the right blue!"Lucky" - now what's not to love about a purple cat! Plus, the graphite turned out quite well too.This is a bit of a cheat, because I knew white is the best for graphite. However, as I said it has been a long time since I've done this technique so this one allowed me to see if I was proceeding more or less correctly!Sgt. Murphy - since orange was one of the colors I had to do one of my cats! However, this obviously is not the correct orange for orange cats - this is another one where I'm going to have to try out other tones! Oh no, an excuse to buy enamels....Sgt Murphy sideways - to show the writing better.

And finally, the color test:

I just couldn't get the two colors Bonnie suggested to make robin's egg blue, so I decided to letter the star too! Now it's a little good luck piece!

So there’s a few hours fun for you! I’m definitely going to order other colors to experiment with, and I want to try a basic dog shape too! Who knows were this road will eventually lead!